- ARCTIC VOL. 37, NO. 4 (DECEMBER 1984) P. 453472 England’s Search for the Northern Passages in the Sixteenth and. Early Seventeenth Centuries HELEN WALLIS* For persistence of effort in the. face of adversity no enterprise this waie .is of so grete.avantage over the other navigations in in thehistory of exploration wasmore remarkable than shorting of half the waie, for the other must.saileby grete cir- England’s search for the northern passages to the Far East. .cuites and compasses and .thes shal saile by streit wais and The inspiration for the search was the hope of sharing in the lines” (Taylor, 1932:182). The dangerous part of the.naviga- riches of oriental commerce. In the tropical.regions of the Far tion was reckoned.to .be the last 300 leagues .before reaching East were situated, Roger Barlow wrote in 1541, “the most the Pole and 300 leagues beyond it (Taylor, 1932:181). Once richest londes and ilondes in the the worlde, for all the golde, over the Polethe expedition would choose whetherto sail east- spices, aromatikes and pretiose stones” (Barlow, 1541: ward to the Orient by way of Tartary or westward “on the f”107-8; Taylor, 1932:182). England’s choice of route was backside ofall the new faund land” [NorthAmerica]. limited, however, by the prior discoveries of .Spain and Por- Thorne’s confident .opinion that“there is no lande inhabitable tugal, who by the Treatyof Tordesillas in 1494 had divided the [i.e. uninhabitable€, nor Sea innavigable” (in Hakluyt, 1582: world between them. With the “waie ofthe orient” and ‘The sig.DP) was a maxim (as Professor.Walter Raleigh (19O5:22) waie of the occydent” barred, it seemed that Providence had commented) “fit to be inscribed as a head-line on the charter especially reserved for England. the “waie ofthe Northe” of Britannia.” (Taylor,1932: 180). To support the .proposal Tharne provided a third item, a Three routes were available: over the North Pole, by the “1ittle.Mappe or.Carde of the worlde” (Thorne, in Hakluyt, northeast, and,by the northwest, and all featured in exploration 1582: .sig.B4V), which he sentfrom Seville. It shows the polar plans. The polar route seemed the most direct, but other con- route .as Open sea, and emphasizes the long distances from siderations concentrated theeffort on the Northeast and North- westto east to. be covered on the Spanish and Portuguese west Passages, and by I600 the northwest was the favoured routes to the Orient. route. Thus England established .inthe sixteenth centurya pat- Nothingcame of this proposal, but the planwas again -tern of enterprke which persisted over a period of some 350 brought to Henry’s attention when Barlow (1541) included it years. That she had achieved by other meansthe objective of a in the final pagesof his ‘‘Brief.Somme of Geographie’’ , a cos- Far Eastern empire did not deter the long and fruitless search mography dedicated to Henry VI11 and written in ,154 1. De- for a navigable northern-routeto the Orient. spite Barlow’s expressed,wishfar the work to be ‘‘.set forth in The first to put forward the proposal that England should print”, it remained unpublished until 1932.The Privy Council seek thedirect polar route was the merchantadventurer Robert considered the plan but decided not to act on it, as appears Thorne .the ‘younger, -who--was Bar1ow”s .friend andhis .from a report in a letter of Eustace Chapuys to the. queen of associate as an English merchantat,Seville:?He set aut the plan Hungary; .26 May 1541. in a letter of 1527 to Dr. Edward Lee (afterwards Archbishop . .about two mntho ago there-was a deIiberation in the Privy of York), then on an embassy in Spain. Thorne followed this Council as to the expediency of sending two ships to the Nor- with an address to King Henry VIII, written about 1531, ex- them seas for the purpose of discovering a passage between horting .the king to take the enterprise in hand: ’ ,“there is left Islandt [Iceland] and Engronland [Greenland]for the Northern one way to discover, which is into the North: for that of the regions, where it was thought that, owing to the extreme cold, .foureparts of the worldeit seemeth three partes are d.iscovered Engiish wodlen cloths would be very acceptable and sell at a good price.. To this end the King has ,retained here for some by other Princes. For out of Spaine they have discovered all . time a pilot from Ciuille [Seville] well versed in .the affairs of the lndies and Seas Occidental1, and out of Portugale all the In- -the.sea, though in the .end the undertaking has been abandoned, dies and Seas Oriental: So that by this .part of the Orient and all owing to fhe King not choosing to .agree to the pilot’s Occident, they have compassed the worlde.” Hemy’s realm terms. .(C.S.P. Span., 1890: Vol. ‘VI,R. ‘1, no. 163: was “nearest and aptestof ail other” for northern discoveries,. 326-327). Thorne wrote, enlarging on “the commoditie and.utilitie of Although Thorne’s plan for .polar exploration had no im- this Navigat,ion and discovering” (Thorne, in Hakluyt, 1582: mediate results, the address and letter were printed and re- sig.B2r-v). He showed that .the routeover the Pole appearedto printed by Richatd. Hakluyt, appearing first in his Divers voy- be shorter by almost 2000 leagues than either theSpanish or ages touching ihe discoverie of America (1582), and -then in the Portuguese route (Thorne, in Hakluyt, 1582: .sig.B4v; the Principal1 navigations voiagesand.discoveries of the Eng- DlVaD2’). Barlow 1ikewi.se explained that the “navigation by lish nation (1589), and in the Principal .navigations, Vol. 1 *The British Library, Great Russell Street, London WCtB 3OG, England 454 H.WALLS (1598).2 The texts served as a prospectus for English enter- of the atlas. Thus Mercator’s concept of polar geography was prise in northern regions and especially for the search for the widely influential. To someoneusing Mercator’s map or Northwest Passage. Hakluyt also included in the Divers voy- chart, the prospect of making a voyage by the polar route ages an engraving of the map of 1527, the original of which hrough the narrow channelsof the encircling lands andacross does not survive. This printed version ranks asthe earliest sur- the “indrawing.sea” at the Pole must have seemed extremely vivingworld map made byan Englishman. At the time of doubtful, despite the report (based on well-established tradi- publication (1582) it might seem rude, Hakluyt wrote in his tions) that Christians lived on the remote islands of the far marginal text, “yet 1 have set it out, because his booke could north and west. In short, the passages to the northwest and not well be understood withoutthe same. The imperfection of northeast through the“Mare glaciale” appeared to be the only which Mappe may be excused by that tyme: the knowledge of practicable routes to Asia. Cosmographie notthen beyingentred among our Mar- The prevailing doubts about the polar route were discussed chauntes, as nowe it is.” by William Bourne, a leading authority on navigation, in his Hopes of discovering a passage over the North Pole were “Hydrographicall discourse to shew the. passage unto Cattay discouraged by other ideas of polar geography current in the five mannerof waies, twoof them knowen, and theother three middle and later years of the sixteenth century. In Sebastian supposed”, 1580.3 Commenting on the fifth way, the polar Miinster’s editionof Claudius Ptolemy’sGeographia, publish- route, he wrote, “it may seeme a meere foolyshnesse and a ed at Basle in 1540, the map “Typus orbis universalis” shows thing unpossiblefor it to bee done, and yet notwithstandingno “Terra noua siue de Bacalhos” (Labrador) attached to “Islan- man can tell, before. that it is put in experience, yet it is the dia” (Iceland), and Iceland to Scandinavia, leaving only the neerest way if that it be navigable. .for to goe directly unto Northwest Passage.as a route to Asia. Gerard Mercator on his the,Pole, if so be that there be no land-to let the passage.” All world chart of 1569 presenteda new interpretation; Adjoining the doubts centred on the “feare of to much cold”, which the Pole, with its large rock and surrounding whirlpool, are Bourne (1592:f077) countered with the hope that “it may be four islands separatedby narrow straits. The Mercator projec- reasonable warme right under the Pole for anye thing that is tion distorts the layout of lands in high latitudes, but a clearer known unto thecontrary, by the long continuanceof the Sunne picture of these appears on the circular.’ inset map of north in summer.” polar regions drawn on a polar projection (Fig. 1). A derived Whether or not Bourne knew ofThorne’s proposals, he was version of the inset map, revised to show recent discoveries, wellplaced to obtain information. on northern regions; his was provided as a separate map, “Septentrionalium Terrarum stepson James Beare had sailed on Frobisher’s secondand descriptio”, in Mercator’s Atlas of 1595 (Fig. 2). Mercator’s third voyages, and was by 1578 an accepted authority on the chart of 1569 was followed by Abraham Ortelius in compiling Northwest Passage. George Best, captainof the Anne Francis his celebrated world map“Typus Orbis Terrarum”, published in which Beare sailed. as master, argued that there wasno in the 7lZeafrum Orbis Terrarum (1.570) and the later editions Mare glaciale or frozen sea, for the “Ocean Sea water” was always salt and neverfroze (Best, 1578:6-7). Thomas Blunde- ville in 1589 contradicted Bourne’s view: “I pray you what heat can the Sunne yeelde to that place above whose horizonhe is never elevated more then 23.